Spell Combos

I use Bows mostly for ranged and back them up with Fireball or Ice Blast(sp?) which causes a round loss of combat.  Late game I use Infernal a lot for groups when my earth Giants AOE is down.  I rely on magic but mostly for transport(teleport) and summons, late game for heals and City/champ buffs.  Magic for Damage is a near last resort to save other untits from near certain death.  (IMHO this is as it should be but looking forward to better AI and balance overall)

The only spell I find truly useful is teleport. Some of the summoning spells are nice. Direct damage or AOE damage once in a while, but it's usually not needed (or the spell will just do zero damage which is super annoying considering how long it takes mana to regen). The spy minion and giant special abilities are all far better damage "spells" than most of the damage spells my casters have and I use those abilities regularly.

I use the spell the keeps a foe from retaliating after a hand to hand strike.

Ice stab and ice blast(sp?) are great, unit loses turns... Titan Breath and hurricane make the melee units at range... most of the time my damage spells miss or do like 1 damage... like my fireball misses and melting blast does 5 damage, but my lightning bolt does 13 damage... its really odd. best thing to do is just use the summons, giants rule.

Deflect and Good Luck I use all the time. 

Spells are mostly useless at the moment - exceptions are raise/lower land, teleport, brilliance and nature's bounty, and a few summoned creatures because you can spam them with imbued champions.

I created a spell called "Ultimate Chain Lightning", which is like the normal Chain Lightning spell, but with a larger area. It's a level 7 spell, so I can't get it early, but then I can get past these boring fights against minor opponents quite quickly

How does deflect benefit? I've had available but haven't really used it.

How does deflect benefit? I've had available but haven't really used it.

Yeah I was doing that until I was playing Empire and didn't have access to crystals or elementium.

That sounds pretty freaking cool. Can you break down how you did that?

The unit it is cast on doesn't get counterattacked for a turn.  Very useful against those high attack/low defense barbarians that start showing up later in the game, you know, the ones with 187 attack, and 8 defense?  So you soften the enemy up with archery, then when he moves up, you cast 'Deflect' on your most powerful attacker, and have 3-4 attacks without getting smoked if the RNG decides to roll you low.

Once they fix mana and magic system then we can talk about what spells and combos are useful. At the moment teleport... Oh sorry that is not tactical spell... hmm... briliance and natures bounty... not tactical again. I dont know about you but I miss with most of my spell and archers. There is one usefull tactical spell, its haste. Make stronges squad possible, cast haste on it, and you can kill enemy armies in 2 turns. No archers or other spells required. It is very efficient, but I hate this strategy. No thinking just building squads of anything...

Yeah, I realize that now. My strategy has drastically altered. No organization, no teleport, reduced gilder. I haven't delved too deeply since the updates but it looks promising. Lightening strike is already doing way more than it was before. So we'll see.

Teleport is my soverign's most used spell.  Next are the brilliance, etc on settlements. Next is the summoned bear as a companion for early exploring missions. 

Tactical?  The hurl boulder helps... havnt tried the other ranged damage spells. 

(all ver 1.0x)

Comment:  When the mana, magic system is in better shape, modding the spells to create real choices with trade-offs will be awesome.  Not uber spells, but magic with an up side and a down side, so players continue to be challenged with interersting choices.